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There are men who are walk to the gallows with more spring in their steps than Shane Watson leaving the crease once he’s been dismissed. It’s a depressing waddle, with many head turns, a puzzled look at the screen, and the sad face of a child who doesn’t really understand why he has to go home. For a good part of his Test career, these walks have taken longer than his innings.

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Watson smiles a fair bit off the field. It’s the sunny, full smile of someone who is pretty happy with life. He can even pull it off after the worst day of cricket, when he has been sent to speak to the press because no one else wants too.

This is a man who earlier in his life seemed to only speak in front of a press pack. Like a young wannabe starlet who hounds the paparazzi, Watson was always there and always available. All the while being too honest for his own good. The Australian media, which can, when raw meat is thrown at them, be merciless, honestly like Watson as much as he seems to like them.

But not everyone likes Watson.

His team’s own press officer leaked the story about him being afraid of ghosts during the 2005 tour. Another Cricket Australia employee once remarked that the most dangerous place in the Australia dressing room was between Watson and a mirror. Cricket Australia’s general manager of team performance, Pat Howard, suggested he wasn’t always a team player. And according to his former coach, his current captain thinks he is a cancer.

During the last Australian summer Watson made a public play for the opening position and suggested he may never bowl again. Shortly after that, he was suspended, along with three others, for not doing everything in his power to prepare Australia to win a Test match. He then left the tour for the birth of his child, which was also right after he had been suspended. He resigned from the vice-captaincy. He then played in the IPL, and bowled.

This, and many other reasons are why the Australian public, and some of the cricket community, find it hard to warm to him.

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When Watson is in charge of a cricket match, it’s a sight worth seeing. Partly it’s the way he hits a cricket ball. He is the perfect combination of timing and power. Not graceful, nor a slog, it’s a cracking bass riff on a rock anthem. It makes the sort of noises that Adam West’s Batman had to use sound effects for.

When Watson takes control of a tournament, it is his. The first time that Watson really showed everyone this was in the 2007 World Cup. Hidden in the middle order, and barely needed, Watson hit 145 runs, with a strike rate of 170.58, and was out once. In any other team they would have made billboards in his honour.

When the first IPL came around, Watson was bought by Rajasthan for US$125,000. He went on to be the player of the tournament with 472 runs at a strike rate of 151.76, to go with 17 wickets at 22.52. Against poor IPL attacks, Watson was a circus strongman taking on local farmers and throwing them back into the crowd. Rajasthan won.

By the time the World Twenty20 arrived in Sri Lanka last year, Watson had proven he was good enough. That he could inflict serious damage. But no one expected what followed, which was four innings in which he beat teams on his own. Dav Whatmore suggested that poisoning Watson might be a good idea. And, in those first four games, it’s doubtful if even that would have worked. It was as if Watson was picking which orbiting satellites he could hit out of the air. Watson was Australia in that tournament, as they unexpectedly made the semi-finals.

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There is something perpetually not right about Watson’s back pad. Virtually every ball he rearranges it, either before the bowler comes in, or even as the bowler comes in. Like most batting ticks, it is impossible to ignore it once you’ve seen it. It is the sort of things old veterans just pick up as their careers go. For someone as brutal as he can be, it is the first sign of weakness. Not that it means he is weak. Just that he isn’t the big hitting heavyweight he would love to be.

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Watson’s first game of Shield cricket was for Tasmania. David Saker also played. Watson had left Queensland for Tasmania when they offered him a place. Queensland had Martin Love, Stuart Law, Jimmy Maher and Andrew Symonds in their side, they couldn’t promise Watson a place. Watson wouldn’t wait.

It meant that even before his first game, Watson was under pressure to show how good he was. On top of leaving his home state, he also had the pressure of being something that Australia had been craving since Keith Miller retired. A proper Test-match allrounder. Not a bits-and-pieces player, or a batsman who could bowl, or bowler who could bat. But a player who could bat top order and bowl serious overs. Watson could bowl really quick, and could bat at three. He was almost too good to be true.

It turned out that it wasn’t completely true. But he is still the most complete allrounder, on talent alone, that Australia have had in a very long time. At his very best Watson gives Australia a proper fifth bowling option, and that was something the great sides of the 1990s and 2000s couldn’t rely on.

It’s amazing to think this player, who could help transform the Australia line-up and win games with bat or ball, is only 46 Tests into a career that he was so desperate to start 13 years ago he left home as a teenager.

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It feels like no one has ever proved to Watson that he bowls medium pace. Every ball that a batsman smashes, he looks visibly distressed that the batsman could do that to him. For most of an over, he has his hands on his head, bemoaning how close he came to taking a wicket. There is very rarely a delivery that comes from Watson’s hand that he doesn’t believe should give him a wicket.

The weird thing about Watson’s bowling is although he still seems to think he is quite quick, he is five times the bowler he was when he was actually quick. When he was quick, he was really rubbish. His bowling was gun barrel straight, he had this windmill action that could generate pace and little else. In his early international matches, he got the sort of treatment he gave to England debutant Simon Kerrigan from South Africa batsmen who were laughing at him.

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An infographic of Shane Watson’s injuries would take weeks to prepare. And you’d find yourself hovering over it for days, not really believing that one man can have this many faults. It seems he has quit, threatened to quit, or had it suggested he should quit bowling in almost every season of his life.

It was the injuries and constant need for attention that turned people off him. Large parts of the public saw him as a big head with a soft body. He teased them with talent, but showed little of it on the field. The seven years between making his ODI debut and being a consistent player in the Test team were full of hate and mocking from the crowd.

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When Watson bowls you feel like you can hear his joints straining under the pressure. Some deliveries it is as if he won’t make it to the crease in one piece. When he does, and he’s finished showing how shocked or disappointed he was with the result, he trudges back to his mark.

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When Watson was 28, he sought the help of batting guru Greg Chappell. He wanted to become Andrew Flintoff. A No. 6 batsman who would come out and make a mark on the opposition and then back it up with the ball.

Instead he became an opening batsman after saying he was up for the job as the media beat Phillip Hughes more than Flintoff ever did.

But regardless of what was often said, Watson wasn’t an all-smashing opening batsman who burned down the attacks of the world. In fact, he was a reliable opening batsman who could tie Australia down and often gave away starts when he was in total control. It was a consistency that Australia needed, and he and Simon Katich out-batted their far-more respected counterparts down the order. Watson lost his opening partner, as Katich was dropped and gagged. Then Watson lost his form.

DRS being used in almost every series didn’t help him. In a new team, he became vice-captain and a leader, but his batting was stuck in neutral. No longer was his front leg a statement of intent, now it was a hittable target. He failed as an opener in 2011, he failed in every other position after that as well. Teams now hit is front pad without much trouble. And failing to go on and make hundreds was now the sort of problem he wished he still had.

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Shane Watson run-outs and DRS use can sometimes seem so unfunny because you’ve seen them so many times. They’re now basically internet memes. Cricket’s keyboard cat or subtitled Hitler videos. You see them, it takes a second to work out you haven’t seen that exact one before, you smile, and then you move on.

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Shane Watson has not been dropped since the 2009 Ashes. He’s been injured and suspended, but not dropped. He worked his batting average up over 42, before dropping it under 35. But he hasn’t been dropped because unlike when he had to move states for a chance, there are no batsmen of his talent sitting around in Australia. He is something special and, flawed or not, they have chosen to keep him. Even if it doesn’t always look like the best option.

It is also why he gets more flack than other players. It’s why he has frustrated fans for over a decade. And today, as brilliant and brutal as he was, it was hard not to think back to his entire career and wonder how on earth this was only his third Test-match hundred and one of very few game-changing innings he has played in Tests.

Watson has spent far too much of his talent tossing around lesser bowlers in lower forms of cricket. In his 176 at The Oval he used those skills to devour Kerrigan and Chris Woakes. But to think of it purely as an innings of that kind would be wrong. Early on he had to survive James Anderson and Stuart Broad moving the ball and strangling Australia. He then had to get up off the dirt after almost losing his head to Broad. And then, perhaps scariest of all, he had to slay the 100 dragon that has mocked him even on his best days. He did it all. Later on, he even killed his DRS troll. It was a Shane Watson day, and the world had to sit back and wait for him to finish.

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When Watson left the crease today, he did it quickly. It wasn’t the walk of a haunted man; it was the walk of someone who had done something. He moved so quickly he almost forgot to raise his bat. Australia have had the potential Watson, the injured Watson, the one-day monster Watson, the moping Watson and the confused Watson.

Now they need Watson the destroyer. One hundred and seventy six was a good start. They, and he, deserve more.

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Shane Watson’s ESPNcricinfo profile is smiling at me. It shouldn’t be. It should be looking sheepish. It should be apologising. It should be trying to show me that he’s changed, that he’s learnt and that in the future things will get better.

I don’t know how you convey that in a picture, but Shane Watson needs to learn it. But Shane Watson doesn’t learn, does he.

If he was a learner, he might not put his front foot in the exact same place every single delivery. If he was a learner, he might not continually fail to turn starts into bigger scores. If he was a learner, he would not decide to review decisions based on no actual evidence.

There is no current player in world cricket who should understand the Laws of lbw more than Shane Watson. Shane Watson is a walking lbw against seam bowling. That massive trunk he calls a leg slams down in front of off stump and dares bowlers to hit it. And they do. Even in a game where he goes out in another way, or dominates the attack, they hit his pad repeatedly.

He should know the Laws inside and out. He should, just by feel of where the ball hits him, now know whether he is out or not. I mean his leg never moves, so he’s more reliable than the blue stripe on the pitch or any weapon technology that a TV company can pay for. He is the constant.

And yet, he never seems to believe it is even possible for him to be out lbw. This was his sixth review of such a dismissal. That is six times Shane Watson has believed he will overturn the umpire’s decision on a form of dismissal that he is out to almost 30% of the time. Does he think his pad is being picked on, or does he really just not understand the Laws of the game?

Or is it the playing conditions of the game?

Thanks to Charlotte Edwards, even the Queen now understands DRS. Yet it seems that to Shane Watson it is a mystery. To get a decision overturned on an lbw, the ball needs to be missing the stumps completely, hitting 100% outside the line of off stump or to have pitched outside leg stump.

Being that Watson’s kind of lbws never really include the leg side, he has picked the two 100% rules of the DRS to overcome. That is stupid. And to do it more than once, twice or even thrice, is unprofessional and egotistical. We’ve all seen the Hawk Eye, it’s like that digital ball always nicks the stumps, no matter what the situation. So taking that on seems joyless.

And as for being outside the line of off stump, Watson should know that the chances are if you put your foot in the same place every single time, your leg isn’t about to be outside off stump that one time. Watson could even just look at the hole on the pitch he has made from the repetitive footprints to double check.

Now even if, as Darren Lehmann has said, that Chris Rogers told Watson to review it – that may have happened, even if it didn’t look like it when watching the incident happen – none of this changes the fact that Watson clearly wanted to review it, he’s a senior player who was hit dead in front, it is his responsibility to the team to choose the best option.

If you’ve never seen a batsman use a review based purely on his own ego, you’ve not watched modern cricket. But to do it so often and recklessly with so little chance of redemption in a team with more managers and staff than a Tina Turner gig is nowhere near good enough. Australia should be better, Shane Watson should be better.

When you have a weak batting side, you need to use your reviews smartly. Overturning lbws that you haven’t smashed onto your pads is not smart. The follow on effect from a shockingly idiotic review is that the next person doesn’t want to use the review for fear of using both of them. So Chris Rogers, who could have gone about his quiet quirky accumulation on his home pitch, was instead sent off the field confused having missed one of the worst balls to get a wicket in Test cricket history.

All the reviews were gone by the time Michael Clarke came in.

This pitiful batting performance reminds us again just how ordinary Australia’s batting line-up is. It doesn’t need a batsman using a review based on the fact that he simply cannot believe he might be out lbw.

That was the review of a petulant child not a 32-year-old veteran of world cricket.

Some ex players leapt to his defence when Pat Howard said: “I know Shane reasonably well – I think he acts in the best interests of the team – sometimes.” Those same players would find it hard to defend Watson on grounds he was acting in the best interests of the team. He was hit plumb in front of the stumps. Rogers seemed to tell him not to refer it. The English players openly laughed at him as he referred it. Yet, Watson still did.

This is a man who has dominated world tournaments. Who can bowl immaculate dry spells. Who has a safe pair of hands. Who can change the shape of a match in so many ways.

But Shane Watson is a Test opener with an average of 35. He regularly gets out in the same way. He has tried to retire from bowling a few times. He was suspended while vice-captain. He has issues with his captain. He bowled in the IPL after stating he wouldn’t bowl in Tests. And he uses reviews in a way that does not help his side.

It’s hard to be on his side.

Shane Watson may have the natural skills and confidence to win Australia Test matches, but he has the behaviour and results of a man who virtually never has.

Since I first heard his name, I’ve wanted to believe in Shane Watson. But in Test cricket he’s a myth. And he can review my findings if he wants, but right at this moment, I’m pretty sure the evidence backs me up.

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Shane Watson is desperate to be an allrounder who bats in the middle order and dominates like Freddie Flintoff. Then he wants to open the batting and still bowl his full overs. Then he’s happy to move down the order to three, as it puts less stress on him. Then he’s content to bat at four, and that it will help him bowl more overs. Now he’ll bat anywhere, but probably gets that his body won’t let him bowl.

That is Shane Watson.

But that is also the Australian selectors. Shane Watson is the biggest headache and most confusing question the selectors have at the moment. Before the Adelaide Test there was more than enough noise that they couldn’t play Watson just as a batsman, and now Watson is just a batsman, they have to work out where to get the best out of him, if they want him at all. Today Mickey Arthur has suggested he may have to go back to opening.

Watson is pure throbbing talent. Large, powerful, deadly and mean. He picked up attacks at the World T20 and shook them down. In the IPL he looks better than entire franchises. In ODIs he’s a consistent wrecking ball.

But in Test cricket he’s an LBW candidate who gets bogged down and doesn’t make hundreds.

In Test cricket he’s mostly myths.

Watson the opening aggressor

One of the most common incorrect thoughts in cricket is that Shane Watson is an attacking opener. It’s simply not true. Sure, for a couple of overs, on the odd occasion, he will slash outside off stump and muscle some pulls, but once he gets to 20 or 30, he stops. And when Watson stops in Test cricket, he’s cadaverous.

Watson’s is 52. That means that in terms of quick-scoring opening batsmen, Watson is marginally closer to Smith than he is to Cowan. And Dilshan and Sehwag are distant dreams.

Watson is a plodding opening batsman who can hit powerful boundaries. More Jason Arnberger than Matthew Hayden.

Watson is a part-time bowler

Some people will suggest that Watson’s bowling isn’t that important. That due to his body and the many, many, many changes in action he is nothing more than a trundling medium pacer who can take up a few overs when the ball is older.

Watson has a Test average of 30 with the ball. His economy is under 3. And he has three five-wicket hauls. He’s a proper fifth bowler who can bowl with the new ball and get movement. Bowl with an old ball and get reverse swing. And be used as a bowler who can keep the runs down.

In 2011, as an opener who was underbowled, he averaged 19 from six Tests and has won Australia Tests with the ball. Sometimes with game-changing wickets, sometimes by the number of wickets he has taken.

He’s clever, he’s cocky and when he doesn’t bowl Australia feels the nakedness of not having a legitimate fifth bowler.

Watson’s in bad form because he isn’t opening

It seems amazing that anyone, especially those in the Australian team bubble, would consider that Watson should be moved back to opening the batting and dropping Cowan. Forget that Cowan’s ugly, yet ultimately effective 36, might have been the difference between them winning and losing a Test match in Sydney. Cowan has averaged 32 opening the batting for Australia in 2012-13, with a hundred against the best bowling attack in the world, and in 2011 Watson averaged just 24 doing the same job.

In 2012, not opening the batting, Watson averaged 31. Watson’s loss of form in Test cricket seems to have come from teams targeting his massive front pad, his inability to turn the strike over with the field set in anything other than full attack mode and his lack of conversions from 50 to 100s.

Overall Watson still averages 43 opening the batting, but that was mostly earned early on, when he was doing very well. Now he’s simply not doing well, no matter where he bats.

Those expecting a return to form batting at the top of the order may find a rude surprise.

Watson is a batsman

Batsmen score hundreds. Allrounders score fifties. Sure that is a generalization, but you know, that’s kind of how it works unless you’re a Sobers or Kallis. Watson can bat, but that’s not being a batsman. There is more to it than that. He seems, either mentally or physically, not able to make the large scores that other batsmen make at the top level.

Watson simply does not score enough Test hundreds to bat at the top of the order. In 38 Tests he has two hundreds and 19 half-centuries. It’s the reason he averages 37 and not 42. Top-order batsmen need to score big hundreds. Watson knows this, and his desperation for the big score has even gotten him out before.

Batsmen work through their innings, not hit and stop like Watson.

Watson can’t bat in the middle order

When Watson first played Tests for Australia he was brought in as an allrounder who batted at seven. Eventually he was moved up to six. In both positions he was a disaster. But Watson as a cricketer was a bit of a disaster at that point. His body was useless. He gave more press conferences than faced balls. His place in the Australian team never felt secure. And he didn’t seem to really know his game at all. That he failed then was not a big surprise. He would have also failed as an opener in that time, but his form was so bad that no one would have tried him there.

Things are different now, Watson’s place in the world is secure, and he knows that he can master worldwide attacks. But perhaps he should try it in the middle order much the way he bats in ODI cricket.

An average of mid to high 30s batting at No.6 with a high strike-rate and bowling when he is fit could be very useful to a team that currently has no No.6 and four openers. It could also unshackle Watson, who just doesn’t look comfortable as a top-order stalwart, but seems perfectly made as a middle-order enforcer.

Or Australia could try him at No.5, as in 38 Tests they’ve tried him in every other position from 1-7.

If that doesn’t work, perhaps Watson could bowl some spin.

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This tournament is fast becoming the search for Australia’s middle order. It’s weak, wounded and clutching rare gems, but first you have to get past the gate keeper. For the fourth time in four matches Shane Watson swatted away anyone who came near the Australian middle order. He has climbed halfway up the World Twenty20 tower clutching the Australian middle order in his large sweaty palm, and will have to be brought down by someone or something special for anyone to see this middle order.

There was a time when Dale Steyn looked like the man who could bring down Watson. Steyn was fast and on song, and Australia barely limped out of the gate. Dave Warner struggled to get bat on ball, Watson was subdued and Steyn seemed to lift Morkel as well. There were plays and misses and the scoring rate was low. South Africa looked confident and Australia appeared meek. The talk started to be about Australia’s first real test of the tournament, people wanted to know what were Australia made of. They’re made of Shane Watson.

After four overs Australia were 15 for 1 but when Steyn was taken out of the attack, Watson opened up. The next four overs went for 45, and Australia went from nervous to magnificent. Jacques Kallis, Morne Morkel, Johan Botha, Robin Peterson and Wayne Parnell all were dealt with like they were pesky net bowlers. Fours were smashed, sixes were cracked. At one stage Watson almost blasted a ball through the rib cage of long off. South Africa collapsed in much the same way Ireland, West Indies and India did.

In this tournament Australia have lost seven wickets. England lost that many in about eight minutes on one night. Tournaments like this are often won by one man, Shahid Afridi in 2009 and Kevin Pietersen in 2010, but neither of them had half the impact that Watson has already had. The most wickets in a world T20 ever is 14, Watson has 10. The most runs in a world T20 is 317, Watson has 234.

At the moment he is mis-hitting sixes, bouncing out the world’s best batsmen, and taking a team that was rightfully a laughing stock and making them their favourite for the whole tournament. It can’t last, can it? There are three matches left for Australia if they make the final, and Watson can’t be man of the match in all three of them, no one could be man of the match in seven straight games.

The next match will be against Pakistan, the team that defeated Australia 2-1 in the UAE as a warm up to this event. The team that reaffirmed the notion that Australia’s middle order is fragile and their play of spin is suspect. Watson was there and made two 40-odds and took a wicket each match. That was the Watson of a few weeks ago, the human Watson. Nothing like the carnivorous man-beast we now see before us.

This Shane Watson is master of the universe. In his grip is Australia’s middle order and Australia’s chance of winning the tournament. Watson’s holding them tight in one hand, while knocking out everyone else with the other.

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There are probably a few people in Hambantota who have changed their name to World T20 for the duration of the tournament.

The most ubiquitous promotion is that of the various star players in three poses with a drum anchoring them to the ground.

The drum signifies the ICC.

The players included in this promotion are mostly batsmen, or all rounders. Ross Taylor, Shahid Afridi, Chris Gayle, Ab De Villiers, Shakib Al Hasan, and Shane Watson.

Stuart Broad and Lasith Malinga are the only real bowlers included.

Dale Steyn has no poster.

DALE STEYN has no poster.

No poster.

It’s Dale fucken Steyn, ABD is nice, and likeable, sings pseudochristian motivational tunes and has a face that could sell baby oil, but he’s not Steyn.

There is only one Steyn in the entire world. And I don’t care if this is a batting tournament, he deserves his own stupid promotion poster.

Steyn had bowled two overs for seven, been the only player to make Watson look human, looked too good for Warner and given South African fans the sort of false hope that religious leaders often give.

Steyn just has the perfect controlled menace about him, you know he wants to hurt you, you know he will try and hurt you, and you know he can hurt you, it’s just whether you can hide in the cupboard while he looks in the attic.

This tournament is not about fast bowlers, but for two glorious overs we saw Steyn stalk the Aussies, and even Watson had to hide in the cupboard.

Then Steyn left, and Watson was Watson.

Morkel fell apart, Kallis looked old and tired, Botha and Petersen were harmless and Parnell became the new Albie. Steyn had two overs to win the match, by the time he came back on it was all over, as was their tournament.

At the very least the man deserves a fucking promotional poster.

Result: Watson is an extremely large gorilla and South Africa have some time to prepare for the Champion’s league.

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It takes real talent to be hated when you are pathetic and just as despised when you are good. Even those who have the talent to get to this level of hatred could never do it as well as Shane Watson. When not in front of the mirror, he seems to be able to move 95% of cricket fans into a frenzy of hate, pure detestation, clear revulsion, and a general uneasy sickness of rage. When he walks around town he has to prance through puddle after puddle of bile as people tend top spew it towards him involuntarily. The great thing about Watson is he seems to not be overly worried by this, the slushing of the bile around his trendy shoes has never changed who he is. His effectively-bullish technically-flawed batting and his elderly-man-getting-out-of-a-car bowling style have very little to do with the bile. The fact that he’s made himself into a very respectable opener does nothing to stop the loathing, and his bowling getting worse didn’t endear him to anyone either. It seems that almost everyone has a reason to hate Shane Watson, the most common being his fear of ghosts, how metrosexual he is, the posing, that he was created during operation paper clip, when he sent off Chris Gayle, calling a press conference to explain how he ate his breakfast (that he bought with Medifast coupons), how he is now good, calling Ajmal for chucking while facing him, that he was once rubbish and the time he hit Gambhir’s elbow. The really good thing about Watson is you don’t need a reason to hate him, it just comes natural. I’m sure he is a great friend, lover, confidant and son, when not playing cricket. He appears daily on the honours board at Lords, like Agit Agarkar. Does Pilates, not Yogalates, the prick.

Not content with turning the Pakistani batting line up into his bitches, he also completely embarrassed his own bowlers with a display of bowling competency.

But to do it on the day the world should be bowing down for Murali, that is just unfair.

Murali had done what he needed to do, took the last wicket in a dramatic way.

He knows how to work a crowd.

Keep them interested thinking that it might just all go wrong, then after a protracted last wicket partnership take the wicket and let the crowd and team mates take over from there.

It was perfect.

The lighting was right, his family were crying, the crowd was roaring, his teammates carrying him and a seemingly slow motion celebration happening around him. All he needed was some music composed by James Newton Howard and a crane shot starting on a close up of his face before moving back to show the whole scene.

But Shane Watson is not a fan of bowlers who deliver the doosra, ask Saeed Ajmal.

And he knew that there was one thing he could do that would dirty Murali’s magic day, and that was him taking wickets.

Nothing ruins a magical day like Shane Watson’s bowling.

He is like rain on your wedding day, he makes everything wet and women cry because of him.

And he knows it.

Six wickets, talk about taking the piss.

Five at Lord’s was bad, but this was one more, scary.

Cricket just feels wrong when Shane Watson is taking wickets.

Before he went out to bowl he knew this was Murali’s day, and look what he did.